


FamILY

by HorseCrazyWriter76



Series: NaNoWriMo November 2019 [25]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Around the time of Accepting Anxiety, Gen, Spiraling Thoughts, not beta read or edited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21609433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorseCrazyWriter76/pseuds/HorseCrazyWriter76
Summary: I've learned the language of the lightAnd the language of the darkAnd though I hear their musicI cannot learn their dance
Series: NaNoWriMo November 2019 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541089
Kudos: 20





	FamILY

Music blared from both sides. On his right, it was a cheerful song that Virgil was pretty sure was from a musical, but he couldn’t remember which one. On his left, it was a slow blues tune. On his right he felt like running around and doing weird steps that barely passed for dancing. On his left he felt like slow dancing through the rain.

Of course, Virgil couldn’t do either of those things. He peered through the window on his right. He had tried knocking on it several times, but they never noticed him. The one he knew was Logic had seem him once and pointed to the right. Virgil had looked to his right, then shrugged. It was a wall. Logic had walked away and had barely acknowledged him since. 

Now Creativity was dancing along to the song while Morality watched. It was clearly choreographed, and Creativity was having a hard time remembering all the steps. He struck his final pose along with the final chord, then dropped it and turned to Morality. Virgil couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Morality got up and Creativity started doing steps slowly. Morality watched, then copied him.

_ He’s teaching him the dance,  _ Virgil realized and scrambled to his feet. As soon as he moved to copy them the window distorted until he was only looking at himself striking a stupid pose. He sat back down at the window cleared, letting Virgil watch as they laughed and danced.

Oh how he wanted to be one of them right then, laughing along with a friend and learning, or teaching, a dance.

He looked to the window on his left. It seemed like everyone except for him was dancing right then. It seemed like Remus and Deceit were fighting about who got to lead the dance. Deceit would spin Remus, then Remus would dip Deceit, and every time they did a step it got a little faster and a little faster. Virgil guessed they had started in time with the music, but now they were past dancing doubly as fast as the music. It was like fastforwarding through a dance sequence in a movie with sorrowful music in the background. 

A drop of rain landed on his head. He looked up. The sky was darker than it usually was, and more rain was starting to fall. He slipped through the grey door with a spider web painted on it. It was the only door.

Thomas looked to be watching a movie.

_ What if someone’s texting you needing help and you can’t tell because you’re watching a movie? _

Thomas checked his phone: no texts. 

_ What if watching a movie sets you so far behind in your editing schedule that you never catch up and the fans hate you and- _

**You are ahead of schedule at moment. Taking a couple hours to do something beneficial to your mental health is not wasteful. The fans have been very understanding in the past at delays.**

Virgil settled in to a more comfortable position on the couch. He tried to enjoy the movie, but soon his attention was diverted by the pile of memories on his desk. When had those gotten there? He kept the worst ones in his room, but mostly they belonged to Logic and Remus. He picked up one of the memories. He flinched as a weirdly worded phrase Thomas had said was brought back to the front of his mind. 

Well, if he had to think about it, Thomas had to, too. He opened the memory and it floated through the tv. Virgil saw him flinch at the memory. He started going through the memories. It was mostly weird things Thomas had said at one point or another in his life, which should all belong to Remus.

He held one of the memories in his hands. If he released them they would go back through and end up in Remus’s room, and he had no use for this amount of cringey memories. He was also still sour at not being able to dance…

He opened five memories one after another. 

He was about to open a sixth when he realized that would do more harm than good. There was no point in making him remember them all at once. Really no point in making him remember at all unless he was getting too confident and started saying things that could hurt others and make their way on the internet where all the fans would find them and they would hate him and-

**In, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, hold, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, out, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, hold, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, out, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.**

Virgil did a few more rounds on his own even after Logic stopped counting. He tuned back to Thomas, who had gotten a blanket and was trying to focus on the movie again. Virgil bit at his nail.

_ You can’t even watch a movie correctly. _

**Nonsense! There’s no right way to watch a movie.**

_ This is supposed to be relaxing. _

**You freaked out from those thoughts. They aren’t connected to the movie.**

Morality was right: the thoughts were connected to Virgil. Virgil who was so impulsive and petty he would risk Thomas’s mental health over a few memories in his room and not being able to dance.

Anxiety: what was his point? Well, it was for protection, but Deceit could protect him against making a fool of himself in public, and staying away from dangerous situations was the logical thing to do, as was working. Morality could keep him doing good things and sticking to promises. Creativity would still make him work at least on the creative bits of his work.

What was the point of having a side who overreacted to everything to the point where other sides had to step in to calm him down?

What was his point?

*****

Virgil watched as the other three sank out. His anxiety was spiking, but he forced it in to a tiny box so he could focus on Thomas, but why had Roman mentioned the others at all?

“What was that all about?” Thomas asked.

“Look, I know I’m the one that’s causing you to be suspicious, but honestly, table that question for another day,” Virgil replied. If he had his way he would have said table that question forever, but he knew that wouldn’t happen.

“Gotcha, and Virgil?”

“It’s really weird hearing you say that.”

“Honestly, thank you for all of the good stuff that you  _ do  _ provide. You can be a good guy.”

A half-smile snuck its way on to Virgil’s face without his permission, but he gave him a two-fingered salute and sunk down in to his room. All of his things were thrown around the room. That was weird: it hadn’t been like that when they barged in to his room. He went around putting everything in its proper place. It didn’t take long because he didn’t keep much litered around, but the shelf took him far too long to put back together. Oh, and that was Logan’s puzzle book, wasn’t it? He would probably want that. Virgil would take it back once he finished cleaning up and had some time to relax. Finally he looked around, satisfied with his room. A memory formed in his hand. He looked down.

_ You can be a good guy. _

He tucked it carefully away under his bed, away from all the other memories he had stored. He pulled out his headphones and put it on shuffle for all the songs he had downloaded on his phone. He sat down on the stairs and nodded along to the music. He popped his eyes open when he felt someone enter his room. He saw Logan’s mouth moving and pulled of his headphones.

“-earlier. Is this my Alice in Wonderland puzzle book?” Logan asked, holding up the book in question. 

“Oh,” he had completely forgotten about returning it to him, “Yeah.”

“I respected your privacy for this long. Please try to respect mine.”

“Okay,” annoyance crept into his voice. What did he mean ‘respected your privacy’? He had never even tried to talk to him. Logan sunk out and Virgil replace his headphones.

His eyes popped open again as another person entered his room. He puled off his headphones again.

“Greetings, frendo.” 

“Yes?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that you had some pretty nifty posters back here.” 

“Ugh, you probably already own, like, 101 Disney posters.”

“Yeah, I do. But me and these posters are simply meant to be.”

“You can’t have my sick nasty Tim Burton posters!” 

“Ugh, fine,” Roman sunk out. 

Virgil had barely put his headphones back on when another person entered his room. He threw back his hood and headphones, “What?”

“Hey, kiddo. Not trying to bother you, just made you a little something for the room.”

Virgil struggled to catch the paper that was thrown at him.

“Hope to see you soon.”

He looked down at the card. UR FAM was printed on the front, and when he opened it four little figures that were little more than stick figures with a rainbow over their head stared back at him, clearly meant to be the four of them. The other side had a giant heart and ILY printed on it. 

“He never really was good at art,” he commented to himself, then stuck it under his bed with the memory of Thomas. He felt restless now, so he put his headphones around his shoulders and opened the door. 

He stared at the wall in front of him. He blinked once, twice, three times. He touched it, feeling the bumps underneath his hand. To his right was another wall. To his left was a row of three doors. The closest one had a red boarder around an amount of stickers from different plays and movies that shouldn’t be possible to own. The next one was dark blue and had chemical formulas written around the rim. Virgil could recognize water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, glucose, and caffeine. The final door was light blue and has a handel shaped like a cat tail. Different cartoon characters and animals paraded around it in clumps and lines. Beyond the doors was a stairway.

He slowly walked down the stairs. They silently took his weight, all 14 of them. Downstairs was a copy of Thomas’s apartment, only with some of the decor shuffled around or replaced with variations on them. The scent of cookies came from where Patton was working in the kitchen, and faint sound of typing came from where Logan was seated at the table with his laptop. 

“Hello, Virgil,” Logan said without looking up from his computer.

“Heya, kiddo!”

Virgil told himself this must be some really weird dream, but the wall beneath his hand seemed real enough.

“I- My room moved,” his mouth blurted out without consent from his mind.

“Indeed it did.”

“Why?”

“You were accepted,” Logan replied, taking a sip from his mug. Virgil looked around wordlessly at the room, then slowly sat down on the couch and pulled his headphones over his ears. He realized he forgot his phone in his room, but Mindscape logic let him listen through the unattached cord. The area was quiet, then Patton set food on the table, and Logan waved his hand to set the table and make his laptop disappear. A second later the sound of Roman singing reached Virgil’s ears, and all four of them sat down at the table. Dinner was pretty much what he expected: loud conversation that wandered aimlessly from topic to topic without really delving in to any of them. They stayed talking past when they were done with dinner, then Logan excused himself from the table. 

“So, Patton, I was wondering since everything calmed down a little bit if you would like to work on the audition dance with me? I’ve been looking through the video and I have all the steps memorized.”

“Oh, I would love to, Roman, but with everything that’s happened there’s a lot of memories that I haven’t had time to pass through to Logan, and I told him I’d start working on processing them.”

“I’ll dance with you, Princey,” Virgil offered. Roman looked at him in surprise as if he had forgotten he was there. Virgil had been pretty quiet throughout the dinner, so he wasn’t surprised.

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Roman replied with a warm smile. Patton slipped away upstairs, and Roman put on the music, showing Virgil the steps. He looked up at the end, “Are you ready?”

Virgil nodded, although he was doubting his decision to offer to dance. Roman did the first step, and Virgil copied. They made their way slowly through the entire dance. Virgil stayed after Roman went upstairs and quietly turned the music back on, stumbling his way through all the steps. He finished, and Virgil found he was smiling.


End file.
